Panel

CfP for Pan­el: “Enact­ing Hope and Desire in Men­tal Health­care: Dis­cur­sive Prac­tices and Ther­a­peu­tic Implications”
Fifth SIAC Nation­al Con­fer­ence “HOPE / DESPAIR / DESIRE” organ­ised by the Ital­ian Soci­ety of Cul­tur­al Anthro­pol­o­gy (SIAC) in the stun­ning city of Mat­era, 25–27 Sep­tem­ber 2025.

Pan­el 14 / SIAC 2025 • SIAC Soci­età ital­iana di antropolo­gia culturale

Pan­el Convenors:

Giu­lia Sci­ol­li, Ital­ian Nation­al Research Coun­cil (CNR)

Rober­ta Mar­ti­na Zagarel­la , Ital­ian Nation­al Research Coun­cil (CNR)

Abstract:

The role of hope and desire for life as “prac­ticed” in ther­a­peu­tic set­tings, as fac­tors shap­ing treat­ment even in sit­u­a­tions that seem to only allow for despair, has been wide­ly explored for con­di­tions like can­cer and chron­ic dis­abil­i­ties (e.g. Mat­ting­ly 1998, 2010). This anthro­po­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture has shown that hope and desire are con­tin­u­ous­ly con­struct­ed and fos­tered through the dis­cours­es and prac­tices of pro­fes­sion­al and fam­i­ly car­ers. Less atten­tion has been giv­en to men­tal health set­tings, where despair is often per­ceived more as part of the con­di­tion being treat­ed and, grad­u­al­ly, of the very per­son who suf­fers, than as a con­se­quence of an ‘exter­nal’ dis­ease. What Mat­ting­ly (2010: 5) calls “a para­dox­i­cal bor­der prac­tice” (hope for a life beyond or notwith­stand­ing ill­ness) is there­fore even more para­dox­i­cal in men­tal health­care, espe­cial­ly for con­di­tions deemed chron­ic. And yet hope has been found to char­ac­terise recov­ery nar­ra­tives, ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ships and treat­ment engage­ment (Long­hofer and Flo­er­sch 2010; Mur­phy et al. 2024; Van Don­gen 1998). This pan­el wel­comes sub­mis­sions that, based on ethno­graph­ic research con­duct­ed among patients, health­care pro­fes­sion­als and/or fam­i­ly car­ers in spe­cif­ic strands of men­tal health­care, show how the dis­cur­sive con­struc­tions and enact­ments of hope and desire for life func­tion as ther­a­peu­tic tools or as points of ten­sion in care, illu­mi­nat­ing their trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial but also their lim­i­ta­tions and eth­i­cal complexities.

Key­words: hope, desire, men­tal health­care, dis­course, practice

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions in Ital­ian and/or English 🙂

To sub­mit a con­tri­bu­tion, please send an email to: giulia.sciolli@cnr.it and robertamartina.zagarella@cnr.it by June 2, 2025 attach­ing a Word doc­u­ment containing:

Name of author(s)
Affiliation
Pan­el num­ber and title
Paper title
Abstract (1500 char­ac­ters max)

The pan­el will host a max­i­mum of eight papers organ­ised in two ses­sions, which will last 1 hour and 45 min­utes each to allow enough time for ques­tions and discussion.

Authors will be noti­fied of acceptance/rejection/possible relo­ca­tion of sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als by June 16, and the full pro­gramme of the con­fer­ence will be avail­able July 15.

N.B. SIAC believes in shar­ing knowl­edge and in main­tain­ing an inclu­sive sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. SIAC Con­fer­ences are open and free for both speak­ers and the pub­lic. No reg­is­tra­tion or mem­ber­ship fee is required to attend.

More info on the gen­er­al con­fer­ence theme can be found here (see sec­ond half of the page for Eng­lish descrip­tion): SPERARE / DISPERARE / DESIDERARE • SIAC Soci­età ital­iana di antropolo­gia culturale

For fur­ther logis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence you can email: convegno.siac.2025@gmail.com

We look for­ward to receiv­ing your abstracts!

Giu­lia Sci­ol­li and Rober­ta Mar­ti­na Zagarella

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CfP for a pan­el on “Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care”
Anthrostate con­fer­ence “Shift­ing States”
22–24 Octo­ber, 2025
Ams­ter­dam, Netherlands 

✨No reg­is­tra­tion fee, in-per­son only. (EASA net­work on Anthro­polo­gies of the State conference)

If the pan­el abstract below res­onates with your research and you would like to join a bunch of friend­ly peo­ple, please send your abstract to Kris­tine Krause k.krause@uva.nl

The final pan­el includ­ing abstracts need to be sub­mit­ted 11 April, so we would like have your abstract the lat­est 9th April.

Junior and PhD researchers par­tic­u­lar­ly welcome.

Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from you!

Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care

The anthro­pol­o­gy of the state has long argued that states do not exist as coher­ent units out there but are artic­u­lat­ed in prac­tices, spaces and effects. One of the key spaces in which states have effects on their cit­i­zens are care insti­tu­tions. They respond to cru­cial needs of humans; for instance as places where sick­ness­es are treat­ed and frail bod­ies are tak­en care of. They can also curate major tran­si­tions such as birth and death. Care insti­tu­tions such as hos­pi­tals or nurs­ing homes are places defined by par­tic­u­lar and per­sis­tent forms of inter­ac­tion. These forms – where and how things are done, when and by whom – have often coag­u­lat­ed over time. They are backed up by legit­i­ma­tions which are not easy to ques­tion, because they are part of oth­er non-tan­gi­ble soci­etal insti­tu­tions, such as gen­dered divi­sion of labour, kin­ship and fam­i­ly ide­olo­gies which are spe­cif­ic to his­tor­i­cal­ly grown care and health regimes. These regimes as part of state gov­er­nance can bear traces of pasts such as colo­nial rule, polit­i­cal regimes shifts or spe­cif­ic biopo­lit­i­cal projects of care and con­trol. Insti­tu­tion­al care can also be pro­vid­ed by non-state actors on behalf of the state includ­ing non-prof­it, reli­gious or char­i­ty organ­i­sa­tions but also com­mer­cial or even cor­po­ra­tized actors. The rea­sons why these actors per­form or have tak­en over these tasks, have again their own his­to­ries often relat­ed to shifts in ways of gov­er­nance of wel­fare state regimes.

This pan­el brings togeth­er papers that explore how shift­ing states and their his­to­ries come back resur­face, or take unex­pect­ed forms with­in the spaces and prac­tices of insti­tu­tion­al care. The papers exam­ine how his­tor­i­cal lega­cies shape and haunt care­giv­ing inter­ac­tions, insti­tu­tion­al rou­tines, and the nar­ra­tives and posi­tion­al­i­ties of those involved in these care set­tings. In ask­ing how these pasts are artic­u­lat­ed, linger on or are rep­re­sent­ed in care insti­tu­tions this pan­el under­stands his­to­ry not as some­thing wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered in the back­ground, but as active­ly brought up, mobi­lized and pre­sent­ed in the field or artic­u­lat­ed by the ethno­g­ra­ph­er. The past then becomes “his­to­ry” through prac­tices of actors in the field or through the ana­lyt­i­cal work of the ethno­g­ra­ph­er who iden­ti­fies his­to­ry as an absent pres­ence in the stud­ied sit­u­a­tion or prac­tice. The paper in this pan­el inter­ro­gate the con­sti­tu­tive moments where his­to­ry appears, or is brought up in insti­tu­tion­al care set­tings, ask­ing, which posi­tion­ings, gen­er­a­tional mem­o­ries and nar­ra­tives become artic­u­lat­ed therein.

Orga­nized by the Relo­Care Team & friends from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Amsterdam
(Mar­iusz Sapieha, Matouš Jelínek, Veroni­ka Priel­er, Sha­hana Sid­diqui , Yuan Yan and Kris­tine Krause)

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CfP for pan­el ‚The Bur­den of Respon­si­bil­i­ty? Ethics, Pow­er and Prac­tice in Care Settings’
World Anthro­po­log­i­cal Union (WAU) 2025 Congress
Novem­ber in Antigua, Guatemala

The Con­gress allows both online and face-to-face par­tic­i­pa­tion and we would love to receive your proposals

Dead­line for sub­mis­sion is May 3rd, 2025. More infor­ma­tion about sub­mis­sion here: Here you can find infor­ma­tion about sub­mis­sion: https://www.waucongress2025.org/call-for-papers/

The Bur­den of Respon­si­bil­i­ty? Ethics, Pow­er, and Prac­tice in Care Settings

Abstract
Med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists have long inter­ro­gat­ed the mean­ings and prac­tices of care, from inti­mate forms of care­giv­ing to insti­tu­tion­al sys­tems that admin­is­ter and with­hold care (Klein­man 1997; Mol 2008). Like­wise, respon­si­bil­i­ty with­in health set­tings has been exam­ined in terms of blame, account­abil­i­ty, and moral oblig­a­tion (Farmer 2004; Fassin 2012; Demi­an, Fuman­ti, Lyn­teris 2023). How­ev­er, we think that the inter­sec­tion of the­o­ries of care and of respon­si­bil­i­ty could ben­e­fit from fur­ther explo­ration. We begin by ask­ing: What do we mean when we speak of respon­si­bil­i­ty in con­texts of care? We encour­age con­trib­u­tors to crit­i­cal­ly reflect on the speci­fici­ties that the term ‚respon­si­bil­i­ty’ assumes in care set­tings com­pared to oth­er con­texts, as well as on the ambi­gu­i­ties and dif­fi­cul­ties involved in defin­ing what respon­si­bil­i­ty con­sists of in such set­tings. How are prac­tices of care entan­gled with respon­si­bil­i­ties, both assumed and imposed? How do indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions nego­ti­ate the bur­den of care, and who is deemed respon­si­ble when care falls short or results in harm? What hap­pens when respon­si­bil­i­ty is frag­ment­ed or resist­ed, and how are these process­es shaped by pow­er rela­tions, gen­dered expec­ta­tions, and neolib­er­al policies?
This pan­el seeks con­tri­bu­tions that inves­ti­gate the inter­sec­tions of care and respon­si­bil­i­ty in health con­texts glob­al­ly. We invite paper pro­pos­als focus­ing on the intri­cate and often con­test­ed rela­tion­ship between care and respon­si­bil­i­ty with­in (but not lim­it­ed to) health and heal­ing prac­tices. In an era marked by increas­ing­ly com­plex health sys­tems, struc­tur­al inequal­i­ties, and glob­al crises, the ethics and pol­i­tics of care have tak­en on renewed sig­nif­i­cance. At the same time, notions of respon­si­bil­i­ty are being rede­fined, dis­trib­uted, and resist­ed across mul­ti­ple actors, includ­ing patients, fam­i­lies, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, com­mu­ni­ties, and states
We encour­age sub­mis­sions that crit­i­cal­ly exam­ine the ways in which care is both an eth­i­cal prac­tice and a site of pow­er, and how respon­si­bil­i­ty is ascribed, inter­nal­ized, or con­test­ed in dif­fer­ent med­ical and socio-polit­i­cal landscapes.

We wel­come papers engag­ing with, but not lim­it­ed to, the fol­low­ing themes:

- Moral economies of care and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty (Mol 2008; Han 2012);
‑Care work and the bur­dens of respon­si­bil­i­ty with­in fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties (Tick­tin 2011; The­len 2015);
‑Inter­sec­tions between care, respon­si­bil­i­ty and gen­dered expec­ta­tions (Glenn 2012);
‑Insti­tu­tion­al care prac­tices and sys­temic fail­ures in assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty (Gar­cia 2010; Liv­ingston 2012);
‑The impact of neolib­er­al reforms and poli­cies on shap­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties (Muehle­bach 2012);
– Health poli­cies and the del­e­ga­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty to patients and care­givers (Biehl 2013);
– Indige­nous, fem­i­nist, and decolo­nial per­spec­tives on care and respon­si­bil­i­ty (Brig­gs and Man­ti­ni-Brig­gs 2003; Puig de la Bel­la­casa 2017);
– The role of the state in care pro­vi­sion and the pol­i­tics of neglect (Das 2015; Red­field 2013);
– Glob­al health inter­ven­tions and transna­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties (Nguyen 2010; Adams 2016).

More info at https://www.waucongress2025.org/panel/?id=892

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